


(Don't) Look for an Empty Sky

by Wolf_of_Lilacs



Category: The Broken Earth Series - N. K. Jemisin
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:00:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22609684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf_of_Lilacs/pseuds/Wolf_of_Lilacs
Summary: I wonder sometimes when I first loved you.(It took Essun two years to join Tirimo. Here they are.)
Relationships: Damaya | Essun | Syenite/Hoa | Houwha
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	(Don't) Look for an Empty Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [copacet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/copacet/gifts).



Let's pause for a moment, before you reach Tirimo. You can rest here, let all this settle.

I wonder sometimes when I first loved you. Time moves differently for my kind, where two years is hardly more than a blink, gone before we know it. But for you—or at least as you were then—two years was long enough for you to slide into a new name and past, and so it felt longer than a blink to me. How long it felt, I don’t quite know.

The few other Meovite survivors helped you to shore. You remained with them for a couple weeks and hardly said a word. You merely watched them, though your gaze was always clouded, turned inward to memories you can never quite shake, never truly outrun.

(I'm sorry that I have had to give them to you, but you cannot appreciate Meov without its terrible end.)

Nortil, a woman you had never spoken to, but who often eyed you from a distance with an appreciative sort of abstraction, was the most patient with you. You spent a few nights in a small coastal comm, far enough from Allia to have escaped ill effects, but the members whispered about it. She coaxed you to eat. None of them spoke Sanzed very well, and all of you were offered very little, out of fear.

It took only a few more days for Nortil's fellow survivors to convince her to leave you behind. You frightened them with your distant gaze, I think. Your orogeny was still but always on edge, a shiver of potential doom in the air and ground around you. She refused, of course. She was decent and, as far as you could gather, feared nothing. "She shouldn't be on her own," she protested, vehement. "We don't know our way around. She could help us."

The man who brought up the idea in the first place looked at you, his eyes narrowed, expression drawn and tired. "She can't even help herself."

"Exactly! So we shouldn't—"

You made up her mind for her by leaving them in the midst of this argument. "What has she ever done to you?" you heard as you hurried away. "She brought death to Meov," you thought you heard in reply.

(That isn't what was said. Or perhaps it was. You never quite knew. But you held it to your chest as you fled. It was truth to you.)

And then you were alone.

I may have loved you then. Or perhaps I already did.

You walked. You had nothing but a small bag that you'd purchased in the comm. You didn't have a particular destination in mind. You went north one day. You turned east another, then went west-by-northwest the next. You kept out of sight of other travelers as best you could. (Your best was very good.)

And then you ran out of food.

You'd run out before and dealt with it. You'd hunted once or twice. Found edible plants. That night, however, almost two months since Meov, you sat and screamed. It was wordless and short and hoarse, cutting off hardly a second after it began. Then you buried your head in your hands. You never once looked up.

(If you had, you would have seen the amethyst obelisk tinged bloody by the fading sunset, hovering almost patiently near to the coast, waiting for your move.)

You wondered, as you so often had, why you were still alive, why the obelisk hadn't finished you. You didn't cry. If you started, you thought, you'd never stop.

I watched you. I shooed away any others of my kind that thought you would be easy prey, although I think you could have survived without my interference; your orogeny was still on edge. You never saw me or them. Never heard the thunder of stone as I fought off the ones who would not be deterred.

You stayed like this for a few days, your knees pulled up to your chest and your head buried in your folded arms, getting up only to take care of bodily needs. You didn't search for food.

But I suppose—or know, for I have watched you for so long—you hadn't come this far and survived so many times, when by all accounts you shouldn't have, to die now.

You got up again. You started to walk.

Where did you go? I followed, sometimes on foot (more or less), sometimes through stone. If I approached you, you would know me for what I was. And so I waited.

Where did you go? To find a new name, first and foremost. You were no longer Syenite, so who would you become?

You watched and watched from the outskirts of comms. What did they need? How could you best disappear? Syenite was a Fulcrum orogene, a six-ringer, a mother, a lover. All of that was passed. What were you?

(Damaya had been born a Strongback. That, you knew, was not what you wanted. Most comms had enough Strongbacks as it was.)

You walked and watched for a very long time. For that time, you were no one at all.

(To me, however, you were always you.)

When at last you found Tirimo, you didn't know quite why you decided to stay. It was no different from any other comm you'd observed, just one among dozens. But you looked up for the briefest of moments. There was no obelisk there, not that you could see, although you didn't really search for one.

Good enough, you decided, squaring your shoulders and lifting your head. You were beautiful at that moment as you named yourself anew.

Essun. Average. Forgettable. That might be you.

I do not know when I first loved you. I believe I always did.

But this story is not for you. You know it. I have given you those terrible memories that you need, but I will keep this to myself. Treasure it. Hold it close.

And now, my love, I will tell you how you change the world.


End file.
